Saturday, May 25, 2013

EA (Enterprise Architect) is responsible for defining, implementing and refining
the overall architecture on a continuous basis, from current state to target
state, from gap analysis to change management, which phase of EA (Enterprise Architecture) is more time
consuming or should invest more time?

The answer is perhaps situation driven, It depends on the
position in which the organization is at business life cycle and the level of
EA maturity. Mature enterprise
architectures would spend more time on Change Management.

EA should be the tool for CHANGE,
though it means a lot: the communication tool, the process optimization
tool, the governance tool, the knowledge sharing tool. While Enterprise
Architecture does and should include the "whole" enterprise, the
"as is" models need
only to be appropriately scopedto
determine starting state, measure magnitude of desired change, and
enable/validate the road maps. However, the most observed, planned
and developed in the change management is called change inspiration. The more people on board, informed and
even inspired about the change, the smoother change can occur with great
effectiveness and efficiency.

The most important task of EA (EA
as a management function, not as a set of artifacts) is to enable and make the most of organizational change. EA
has a unique position to provide innovation to the enterprise, because it
comprehends process change as well as emerging technologies. This combination allows EA to
both reduce the risk, and improve the reward, of all scales of
organizational change (for example, whether a fairly straightforward
process improvement effort, or large scale transformation). All of the
other aspects of EA (communication, analysis, technical rigor, business
alignment, etc.) are necessary to achieve this most important task.

Change management is Focal Point.
The time and effort devoted to communicating in creating, refining and
delivering EA artifacts has always been time consuming. Doing EA at higher
levels of abstraction, the effort on current vs. future is very dependent
on the particular enterprise and the degree of stability in their business
model / business strategy. For most of organizations, Change Management
needs to be a focal point, as it is where the true value is derived. In
essence, EA is also about the roadmap or GPS
for business to implement a good strategy, which includes a few key steps
such as: Problem Diagnosis (current state), set up policy/guideline
(gap/impact analysis to define where & how), cohesive actions (Change
Management), and Future state.

EA is Chief Designer for Change: The
greatest need that calls out for EA is that of Enterprise transformation. The ability
to change organizations so that they better fit and serve their context.
The process of how organizations change draws on many disciplines from
psychology and behavioral science to engineering and systems thinking. The
underlying principle is that change does not happen in isolation. It
impacts the whole organization and each individual associated with it.

The Ultimate Goal for EA is to make
the enterprise more agile and responsive to changes. Some EA think Current
state is most time consuming, as most enterprises (particularly those large
ones) embarking on building an EA face the daunting task of identifying,
discovering and cataloging the current systems estate. This can be really
challenging if you have business functionality duplicated across multiple
systems. Doing this at an agile environment; each of these states
would be included in iteration. The initial as-is does not have to be
"excruciating”. At the end of the day, EA is considered as successful only if it can reduce complexity
and enable maximum reuse of assets.

In a perfect world, there would exist an accurate current state architecture.
That is rarely the case when starting on the path of EA, and when achieved
through moving through the levels of EA maturity will require less time with
each step. Change needs to be EA’s focal point, and EA is organization’s change
agent.